Abstract: In the current undergraduate education stage of medical students, teaching primarily focuses on knowledge transmission, while systematic training in the complete process of scientific research is relatively lacking. To address the gap in research competency during the transition from undergraduate to postgraduate education, the School of Public Health at Tianjin Medical University launched the Joint Undergraduate Master Program (JUMP) in 2025. Through systematic curriculum design and tiered instruction, the program aims to equip medical undergraduates with fundamental research competencies and literacy, enable them to master the full set of research skills required to complete their undergraduate thesis projects, and further strengthen their research skills so as to facilitate a smooth transition to postgraduate study in terms of both research skill acquisition and academic role transformation. The program developed six core modules, namely academic career planning, medical research design and proposal writing, programming fundamentals and statistical software, data management and statistical analysis, literature retrieval and reading, and academic writing, and research frontiers. It adopted a blended teaching model of “face-to-face instruction + synchronous online delivery + recorded playback” and established a three-tier collaborative management system consisting of program leaders, module coordinators, and teaching assistants. In terms of curriculum development, 90 teaching hours were completed in the first phase, 197 instructional videos were produced, and an initial course resource repository was established. The course has also been formally incorporated into the elective course catalog for both undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as the planning for a micro-credential program. In terms of student research training, 155 students participated in the first phase of the JUMP program. Overall course satisfaction reached 95.5% (148/155). A total of 82.6% (128/155) of the students reported that the program significantly reduced their unfamiliarity with research, and 87.3% (103/118) believed that it laid a solid foundation for research learning at the postgraduate level. The completion rate of the R language practice tasks was 100.0% (155/155), and the average class attendance was 89.0% (138/155). Practice has shown that the first phase of JUMP achieved positive outcomes in improving medical students′ learning engagement, research awareness, and initial research competency development, and to a certain extent enhanced undergraduates′ research capability, laying a solid foundation for a smooth undergraduate-to-postgraduate transition.

Key words: Students, medical, Research capacity building, Blended learning, Stratified instruction